Difficult games

I was asking myself this question over and over again, does the difficulty of the game affect the enjoyment of the game, and if it does how big is that affect. Usually when people talk about difficult games the conversation about what is the most important element of the game revolves around gameplay, story or graphics. While difficulty can be put under the category of gameplay it is definitely something that should be analyzed separately.

For me personally I pretty much always default to normal difficulty, and if the game gets to easy I would bump it to higher difficulty. Generally speaking I don't really crave a whole lot for a challenge in a game. I just don't wont to get in a situation where a game's difficulty can become a big hindrance to my completion of particular game. Of course if the game doesn't have a choose difficulty element than you just have to deal with in game difficulty. And there we get to main reason that I started this article, hard games. Not ones that you can bump up difficulty but ones that are difficult by design. First games that come to mine were those from Souls series (Demon Souls and Dark Souls I and II). Souls games are easily some of my favorite games, with first Dark Souls being in the top 3 of my all time favorite games list. Usually when people talk about Souls games they usually talk about their difficulty. I know a lot of people who gave up playing this game after couple of hours since they found it frustratingly difficult.

Are Souls games really that difficult? A simple answer would be yes, but the best part about its difficulty is that is not unfair. What I mean by that is that I rarely died in this game in a cheap way. I mostly died because I was either too greedy in particular fight, completely unprepared or I wasn't focused enough. Every death was a great learning experience for me in the long run. It is a game about learning enemy patterns, being patient and knowing when is right time to strike or block. The fight mechanics in these games are some of the best of any action adventure game and they should be considered a template for other games in this genre. However the level of difficulty of these games is what made them famous, and what built rabid community around these games. But are they really the most difficult games that you'll ever play. Those people that gave up early would say yes, others who completed it like myself would say no. People usually forget those really old NES games that are really hard, just try completing Contra without any cheats (so no Contra code involved).

For the most part games on early consoles didn't have the choice of difficulty, so when you encounter a really difficult game sometimes the only way to complete it was to resort to cheats or Game Genie. Those really brave would go trough all the adversity and complete the game or just give up all together. I don't remember when was the last time I gave up on modern game due to its difficult, those that got really difficult I just simply switched to easy. I couldn't do this whit older game which led resulted in many older games that I haven't completed. Battletoads obviously comes to mind, that is probably the most difficult game I've ever played.

And lets not forget the likes of Ghosts 'n Goblins. I've actually finished this game, but as you probably know once you complete it once the game sends you back to beginning and once you complete it one more time you will get the true ending. I was so pissed off that I simply gave up and never finished this game. Ninja Gaiden was one of those series that was notorious for being very difficult. I have only played only NES one and I didn't complete that one, so that kind of put me off the series.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) is also one of those extremely hard games, it is one of those games that was unfairly difficult. It had one of those notoriously hard levels (see the video bellow), that was so frustrating that it made so many people gave up on it.

And then you have those games that are very difficult even on the lowest difficulty. The most notorious example of this was Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening. Capcom actually made Japanese hard mode of this into normal mode for European market. Later on when the game was re-released with the original normal difficulty. The game was extremely difficult regardless of which version and which difficulty you had played it on. Generally speaking every game in this series is hard but this one stands out as the hardest one of the bunch.

 Do difficult games put off gamers from buying that particular game. Short answer is sure. It is definitely hard to convince a casual gamer to even consider playing certain game. A lot of people I know simply don't want to buy or even play Dark Souls because it is considered to be one of the hardest modern game. And while Souls games are well advertised and one of the best received games in years they came out, they still don't sell as much as some other big games (like Assassins Creed, COD, Borderlands). You can say that Dark Souls is a game that has a niche crowd and people that like it really like it. Some of other big games have a lot of detractors, game like Dark Souls doesn't have as much. In fact I haven't really heard anything bad about this game aside from ones who consider it so difficult that they gave up on playing it all together. In spite of that it still influenced some games that also strive to achieve the level of fair challenge that Dark Souls provided. One of those games is Lords of The Fallen, while not a bad game it didn't even come close to greatness of Dark Souls.

Bottom line is I really like hard games. It is good to play a challenging game as far as that challenge is fair, and is not consisted of cheap deaths. Dark Souls definitely excels at that, and that is why it is one of my favorite games. While they might me off putting for casual gamers they definitely pose a welcome challenge for hardcore gamers. Triple A games usually play it safe and avoid having very difficult game by design so that they can attract both hardcore and casual gamers as well in order to sell more copies. That is probably the main reason why we don't see many hard by design triple A games. However in indie circuit the difficult games are far more prominent. Games like Bit.Trip Runner and This War of Mine (which I've recently played) show that some of the most difficult games of modern age are indie ones.